Tuesday, May 17, 2016

Virtual Book Tour: Hand Over Fist

Please welcome author Michael Ross, who is here to talk about his new release, Hand Over Fist. Michael will be awarding a $10 Amazon/BN GC to one randomly drawn commenter via Rafflecopter. The more you comment, the better your chances of winning. To find the other stops on Michael's tour, go here. Don't forget to look for the Rafflecopter at the end of this post!

The
Questions
1) You’re marooned on a small island with one person and one item of your
choice—who is that person and what item do you have?
2) Which musical would you say best exemplifies your life – and which character
in that musical are you?
3) Take these three words and give me a 100 word or less scene using them:
hammer, saucer, traffic lights
4) You’ve just been let loose in the world of fiction, with permission to do
anyone you want. Who do you fuck first and why?
5) What is your idea of how to spend romantic time with your significant other?
6) When you start a new story, do you begin with a character, or a plot?
7) If they were to make the story of your life into a movie, who should play
you?
8) Who’s your favorite horror villain and why?
9) Do you have an historical crush and if so, who is it?
10) Is there a story that you’d like to tell but you think the world isn’t
ready to receive it?

1
Leonardo da Vinci Some charcoal and paper, so I could talk to him and watch his
brain working whilst he sketched. What an experience that would be.

2
Les Miserables Javert So much like my life, going from one extreme to the
other, millionaire to bankrupt, but always trying to hang on to my principles.

3 I didn't hammer on the front door,
there was no point, her orange Toyota was not parked outside. However the back
door was unlocked so I made some tea and after a while placed a saucer on top
of her mug.

After twenty minutes I was getting
increasingly worried so drove back back into town, before a policeman flagged
me down.

“I'd turn around if I was you,
there's been an incident at the traffic lights. A lorry has obliterated a
little Japanese car.”

I knew the colour without asking, and
the person who had caused the accident.

4
Thank god I've never been that desperate, but Maid Marian always struck me as
being hot.

5
Idly cycling around Gdansk followed by a meal in our favourite Russian
restaurant.

6
Often with nothing more than a phrase or expression that resonates in my head.
All my novels have started life as short stories.

7.Ryan
Reynolds (I can dream can't I?)

8
Hannibal Lecter, all that evil lingering behind the eyes.

9
Lady Godiva – the number one diva of her time. Ballsy with a sense of humour.

10.
No. I find that very hard to imagine (clumsy pun!)

Hand Over Fist

by Michael Ross

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

GENRE: Thriller

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

BLURB:

When
an old friend disappears, Martin learns nothing is what it seems…

Martin Russell can barely face the future. With dismal life prospects and an
estranged family, he is at the end of his rope. When an old friend, Hannah,
elbows her way back into his life, Martin’s luck begins to turn around.

Hidden within the shadows of evil, there must be some good…

Ex-policeman Bobby Tanner lost everything one rage-filled night. Now he runs a
reading group for alcoholics where he meets a young drug dealer, Zack, who
disturbs him in a way that’s hard to define. Bobby soon discovers the teenager
is in over his head and has been dealing with a despicable individual known as
The Chemist.

The roots of evil run deeper than we imagine…

Martin’s lucky streak begins to unravel when Hannah suddenly goes missing, and
he turns to a friend of a friend, Bobby, for help. Thrust into an underworld
empire of corruption and half-truths, he learns his friend may not be who he
thought she was.

In a shadowed world of deception, stalkers, and despicable drug dealers, Bobby
and Martin must uncover the truth, and fast…

Several lives depend on it.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

EXCERPT:

The Chemist’s house was one of a pair of semis that were
angled at the end of Shortcross Drive. The area was the roughest part of the
city, an independent borough with its own self-administered terms of crime and
punishment. The crimes that carried the heaviest forms of punishment were those
that affected The Chemist negatively. Punishments ranged from cutting his lawn
for a month to having both your knees smashed by a crow bar. And even worse
punishment still if you failed to insist to Accident and Emergency staff at the
hospital that you’d been hit by a car.

By the time the local police force had recognised The
Chemist’s power, it was easier to leave him well alone than to face the cost of
breaking down his power base. The town council owned the semi-detached house,
normally leased to low-income families, that he rented, and it was
fortified stronger than a clearing
bank’s vault. Over the years, every door and window had been replaced and so
heavily reinforced that it would take a tank to force entry into the property.
Someone in the council must have been aware that the house next door had been
vacated by the Callaghans many years before, but no-one had the balls to create
a fuss. The rent was paid on the dot every month by a Mr. Baldini, and if
anyone had noticed it was the same Mr. Baldini as the one in the house next
door, they had kept that information to themselves.

The front bedroom of the house next door was manned
twenty-four seven. Nobody made their way up Shortcross Drive without being
seen, so Bobby hung back as far away as possible. He did not need visible
evidence, however, to know that Zack had entered The Chemist’s house. And if he
had entered The Chemist’s house, it only meant one thing. Zachary Jackson was
dealing. Fuck.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

AUTHOR Bio and Links:

It was a
strange and twisting road that led to the publication of my first novel. From
my humble beginnings, as an office clerk, to ownership of a multi-million
dollar business I always maintained my love for literature.

Born and
raised in Bristol, England. I spent most of my life in business, my companies
turning over in the region of $500 million. The majority of that time marketing
cars, eventually owning the largest Saab specialist in the world, before a
bitter divorce forced me rethink my priorities. Particularly between 2003 and
2005 when I had to accept that I was no longer a millionaire but literally
penniless. I avoided bankruptcy by the skin of my teeth and slowly rebuilt my
life.

This led me
to the life changing decision to leave the bustling city and move to live
halfway up a mountain in the Welsh valleys. At the same time I started a part
time six year English Literature course at Bristol University, and attended
creative writing classes at Cardiff University. I left school at sixteen and
this was my first taste of further education and an immense challenge.

I eventually
adjusted my thinking to the academic life, and on 30 June 2015 had confirmation
of my 2.1(Hons) degree from Bristol University. At the same time I also won the
prestigious Hopkins Prize for my essay on Virginia Woolf and the unsaid within
her text. Now the university courses are finished it will, with any luck, gives
me plenty of extra time that I can devote to my fiction writing.

Thanks to the
university experiences, my interest in English literature has flourished over
recent years. Hopefully I have evolved as a writer from my earlier work in
short stories (over ninety of them.) Although interestingly my first three
novels have all been developed from a long forgotten short story.

Life is, once
again, very good, and I live very happily halfway up a mountain, in the Welsh
Valleys, with my wonderful partner Mari, and our rescue dog Wolfie.